Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you so much for your support and words of appreciation over the past few weeks as we have all grappled with the sudden changes to our ways of life.

Whilst no decision has been made for Term 2 at this stage, we have spent this week preparing and planning to ensure continuity of learning is available for all of our students in the event we need to move to remote and flexible learning at the start of Term 2.

We have worked hard this week to plan materials you can complete at home with your child to ensure continued learning support is available if needed, while we deal with the unchartered impact that COVID-19 is having on our school community.

You will have had several phone calls from your child’s class teacher this week. These calls are to establish how best to:

• provide you with ongoing support
• ensure you can collect any physical resources, if you do not have access to online learning
• maintain contact and continuity for your child if we need to move to remote/ home learning

In the event we do move to remote learning in Term 2, we will continue to regularly “check-in” with both you and your child. We are aiming to contact you regularly via phone and email.

In addition, we will continue to post on our Facebook page – please go on Facebook and “like” our page if you have not already done so. If we move to remote learning in Term 2, we will post story readings, some fun activities and messages from individual teachers to their classes so students feel less disconnected. Please post positive messages back to us!

Managing mental health and wellbeing is very important during this time of uncertainty. Keeping physically distant but socially connected is vital for all of us. We know our students will miss their classmates, teachers, routines, favourite activities, playtime, assembly and all the little things that make up being part of a school community. We are really missing our students!

In addition, information about the range of resources available to support student wellbeing and mental health can be found on OnePortal with specific information relating to the Coronavirus pandemic available on the learning@home site.

If we do move to remote learning, resources and information packages have been collated and will be available on Monday 20^th April in either:

• a hard copy format for collection from the school transport Zone between 8:30am and 10:30am (Tables will be set up with individually named bags)

• online from our school SharePoint – log in details will be emailed to you

If you have no transportation, you will have informed staff this week and we will consider how best to deliver these materials to you on Monday 20^th April if needed.

As we navigate our way through this difficult time, please stay safe. I wish everyone a Happy Easter and look forward to connecting with you all next term.

Best wishes,

Sarah

Greetings Gympie Special School Families,

Thank you to all of our parents and caregivers who have recognised the hard work of our staff and their care and support of our children during these unprecedented times. 

As a whole school community, we are very much looking forward to when we can resume traditional school learning.  In the meantime, our teachers and teacher aides have been working very hard this week to provide continuity of learning if it is necessary. Thank you for providing your child’s classroom teacher with some details regarding your preferences for supporting your child’s education. 

As the Coronavirus (COVID-19) situation evolves, the Education Department are regularly updating websites. If you have questions, the updated FAQs for parents webpage provides valuable information.

National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and COVID-19

The COVID-19 situation has impacted on the support services for your child and you may need to make some changes to your child’s NDIS plan to better meet their needs.

If you need any information about the NDIS during the coronavirus pandemic please refer to the NDIS website. Families can also ring the NDIS on 1800 800 110 to talk to a planner, make changes to their child’s NDIS plan or source services.

Remember the most important thing right now is, you and your family.  Everything else can be replaced or caught up at a later date.

The message from all of us at Gympie Special School is to please take care, look after yourselves and one another and keep up to date with Government advice.

Stay connected and check in on family and friends often.  

As term 1 closes for our devoted staff at Gympie Special, I would like to extend a warm and gigantic THANK YOU to our entire school community. Impacts from the current social restrictions are felt across our entire community and it is within these times of crisis we reassess what is important to us all. We are all living and breathing through experiences we have never dealt with before and we are all unsure as to how or when it will all change back to normal. We are here for you in your time of need. Send a message via email and Facebook, send a photo, a video or a voice recording, whatever works best for you, keep it touch!

Give yourselves a break and enjoy quality family time with your children. Enjoy your term break playing, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. Teaching staff have been busy this week, preparing home learning packs and online activities in the event that learning from home transpires. The Government will inform us all before April 20^th and we will send more information about home learning, if it happens at the commencement of term 2. Rest assured in the event home learning occurs, teachers will be there to support you all, checking in with phone calls, emails, Facebook messages and with any luck via video link (if we can get it up and running smoothly). This will be a new method of teaching for our teachers, and a new way of learning for our precious children. So always, always, always, be kind to yourselves. If your child is finding home learning difficult, you can only do the best you can. Above all, you and your family’s happiness, well-being and calmness is most important. Home is a place to feel safe, loved and encouraged, especially during these times. Your children will be missing their normal routines, their friends, playtime, taxi and bus drivers, teachers, carers, classrooms and school activities. It will be new to all of us, so be easy on yourself, do not force schoolwork if it is not working. If it happens we will be with you on this new journey, we will be in touch and we can problem solve together. 

Stay safe and play together, have a fantastic Easter and enjoy the school break until April 20.

Coming to the end of term our Art projects are nearly completed. In Early Years the last activity we did was another ‘looking down’.   Students chose an aerial photo or drawing and then cut and pasted a photo of themselves flying over the landscape. While posing for his ‘flying’ photo one student was convinced he could never fly, however when he helped choose and paste his photo in the sky he was very excited that there was a picture of him ‘really’ flying.

Primary students have worked so well in a collaborative way to build their Tiny World model. It has been impressive to see how well they have shared resources, assisted each other with model arrangements, and been respectful of others’ work. In the final model each student made their own arrangement of the elements to show their individual version of a tiny world.

Junior Secondary students have completed their sea creatures and have been making and painting cardboard coral and seaweed for a diorama display.  For stimulus and ideas we have been watching a Youtube clip, of underwater coral and sea creatures. It is a beautiful and relaxing clip with stunning scenery filmed in French Polynesia and Indonesia. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSRj847AY8U or search rainbow reef relaxation.

The printmaking unit on Pop Art that the seniors have been involved in has produced some exciting prints. It was great to see how many of the students persevered with the media of printing with cardboard. The process was unfamiliar for all students.

Next term in The Arts we will be studying Drama.  I am looking forward to seeing our students build on the skills they developed from last year.  If you have some spare time during the break, the following drama game can be fun to play at home. It encourages students to work together and to be creative at the same time.

 Easter Greetings and wishing all a safe and happy break.

Chris

I would like to share some photos of the work that the students have done over the Term. From sharing stories about different families to comparing families, past and present and looking at family structures. Have a safe school break.  Miss A

DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGIES

Already a week in to the break for some and it has been very quiet around the school as we get ready for learning at home in the immediate future. Fortunately, the strong start to the year has left us well prepared to pass on some activities to keep up familiar routines from the comfort of your kitchen table! The learning goals in Design and Technologies align with literacy and numeracy goals so there are no extra tricky steps – our aim is just to have a go!

Students may use this time to practise fine motor skills: try using a pair of safety scissors to cut out pictures from old magazines, birthday cards, or store catalogues. Too easy? Find pictures that have  items starting with a certain letter or only cut out letters. Unfold paper bags (adult), envelopes or cereal cartons and use tape or glue to put them back together (student). Move small items like buttons, blocks, snack foods etc from one bowl to another using tongs. Use an eye dropper to squirt water into an ice cube tray. Set timers for 5 minutes and rotate activities for 15-20 minutes each day – stop when it’s still fun so children are happy to do it again. As our focus this semester is on food and fibre, casual chats about the origin off familiar foods (milk, eggs, meat) at meal times, and fibres (wool, paper), when getting dressed or colouring in, is all you need to do to stay on top of this topic over the break. The days of sitting at a desk for hours are over, learning at home is not the same as home schooling but in times of uncertainty, keeping up with some familiar routines can reduce anxiety and keep your kids calm. See you on the other side! Jodie

Hello to all of the Early Years students! Hello to all the mothers, fathers and families as well. It’s been a strange week at school without you all but we’ve been keeping busy preparing for you to do school work at home in the event that we don’t return to school after the Easter break. We are hoping that by then things will be returning to normal but in case not, we’re ready to go! All the staff have been remembering to keep their social distance from each other and to wash our hands often.

We have been thinking about you during the week and wondering how your days are going. We hope you are all well and enjoying being with your families. It’s an uncertain time but we are able to slow down in our usually very hectic lives, stay home and connect with our loved ones.

Please stay safe and happy. We’ll keep in touch and you will be able to contact us on our school emails if you want to.

Bye for now.

The Early Year’s Team.

Wow! This term has just flown by and what changes we have seen! We have been challenged, not only, in the classroom and playground but our whole world has changed and continues to do so on a daily basis. However, some things remain the same! In English we continue to complete our Sign In each morning before discussing our Morning Message. We then decide on a picture to respond to using the PODD, before we write our words or short sentence, with the help of a Qwerty or Flip chart as our alternative pencil. We read our Book of the Week and answer questions related to it. We have been looking at different celebrations and really enjoyed finding out how illustrations support the text, especially when we read about Cascarones. This is a Mexican tradition where painted eggs, are filled with confetti and broken over a friend’s head, to give them good luck! We complete our predictive sentence each week and are learning to sequence the words in order before illustrating them. In maths we have been working on 1:1 correspondence when counting groups of objects and matching number names with numerals and quantities. We have also started to compare objects according to length, using the terms ‘short’ and ‘long.’ Our science has involved some interesting experiments and recently we made some binoculars to test lenses made of alfoil, paper and cling wrap. We all decided that cling wrap was ‘transparent’ and the best choice because we could see through it!

 We hope that everyone has a happy and healthy Easter break.

Sincerely,

All of us in P1.

Ms Erin has been away for the end part of this term and Ms Jan has been our teacher helping Miss Jenny in P2. The students have spent the last few weeks working on their measurement. WOW, so many things to measure! Like Chairs, desks, tables and books. Even our bodies!! We used blocks and paper clips as measurement tools, and on St Patricks Day we made water green and measured how much our containers could hold.

Week 10, who would have thought we would be sitting in our classrooms preparing resources for our families to use at home. We will continue to teach all our students, however, the delivery will be a little different.

Each student has made such a positive impact on us all this term by sharing their likes, dislikes and their knowledge on a range of topics.

In literacy, the students have embraced a range of ways to engage in reading, from choosing their own books or being read to as a group or individually. And sometimes with the help of a resource or two. Ms Cann’s class shared their giant bird nest hat to wear when reading, ‘The Singing Hat.’ The story was about a man that carried a nest complete with birds on his head. Interesting concept!

Our physical breaks continued to be a great source of pleasure especially when using the foam rubber brick or the wheel. We have also been playing line tiggy in the quad as a class and badminton with all junior secondary students.

Have a wonderful, relaxing, safe break.

Stay posted,

JS1 Students, Tony, Bree, Debbie and Deb.  

We have had to make a big decision each week selecting our student of the week.  Students are nominated for their achievements that they have demonstrated during the week.  Then the class votes - which it has been very close each time!  Mr Darren, Miss Grace and Miss Sue have been really proud to work with our students this term.  They continue to amaze us with their commitment to learning, their respectfulness, and understanding of the importance of keeping safe.

In the last weeks of term 1 JS3 welcomed a new student to our class.  They have fitted in really well and have made many friends within the classroom and the wider school community.

Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden

Over the past few weeks the seniors had some introductory sessions to Stephanie Alexander to see if this would be a subject that they would like to do in the future.  The garden beds had become overgrown over the Christmas break and it was great to give them some extra love and attention.  Students showed how hard they can work with some great enthuasium while weeding, turning the soil and adding compost and manure to make sure the beds are ready for planting in the near future.     It was great to see the team work as tools and jobs were shared, conversations had and discussions about how to equally share compost between all the garden beds and why we were adding these products to the soil.  This project was enjoyed by all involved.